


more things in heaven and earth, horatio

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Frederica - Georgette Heyer, HEYER Georgette - Works, The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer, The Quiet Gentleman - Georgette Heyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Humor, Crossover, F/M, Female Friendship, Ghosts, Period-Typical Mortality, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, one dead pet (it was its time but I know this upsets people)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 14:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17726963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "Lady Talgarth - Sancia - was a sort of chère amie of my father’s," Sophy said, hurtling towards a turnpike. The groom operated the yard of tin. "Although eventually they decided they were not suited, and Sancia married Sir Vincent. The thing is that she may be very languid and Spanish but she is not at all prone to fancies -" they shot through the turnpike - "and if she says she has a poltergeist, she has a poltergeist.""Good heavens," said Drusilla, indignant, "is that all?""Yes." Sophy slowed. "There really was no need to spring the horses, but they were restive and that was the most suitable stretch of road.""That is not what I meant," Drusilla said, "although - Sophy, why didn’t she just have the curate deal with it?""Sancia is a Catholic. She considers the Church of England anaemic and untrustworthy. And besides, the curate stammers."***Five ghosts Sophy and Drusilla laid to rest, and one they did not.





	more things in heaven and earth, horatio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisbluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/gifts).



> I think I have the right giftee, but please let me know if not!

**1**

 

"I don't think I know Lady Talgarth," Drusilla said, hanging discreetly onto her bonnet. Sophy was driving - and while Drusilla had a great deal of faith in her skill, it had to be admitted that she drove with verve. "Nor have I ever been to Merton... I think."

 

The Morvilles were, of course, radicals. But Mrs Morville, a careful parent, would not have approved any association with the scandalous Lady Hamilton, and it was impossible to unlink Merton from her memory. The Stanton-Lacys, Drusilla was coming to realise, were a very different sort of family to her own. They didn't give a damn about reputation, and because they were so charming when they didn’t give a damn, they carried off every mildly scandalous thing they did with panache.

 

Sophy, of course, was now technically an Rivenhall; Drusilla did not move in government circles and would not have met her without her return to London, and their respective marriages to Charles Rivenhall and the Viscount St Erth. But it seemed as if Sophy were remaking the Rivenhalls in the Stanton-Lacy mould.

 

"Lady Talgarth - Sancia - was a sort of chère amie of my father’s," Sophy said, hurtling towards a turnpike. The groom operated the yard of tin. "Although eventually they decided they were not suited, and Sancia married Sir Vincent. The thing is that she may be very languid and Spanish but she is not at all prone to fancies -" they shot through the turnpike - "and if she says she has a poltergeist, she has a poltergeist."

 

"Good heavens," said Drusilla, indignant, "is that all?"

 

"Yes." Sophy slowed. "There really was no need to spring the horses, but they were restive and that was the most suitable stretch of road."

 

"That is not what I meant," Drusilla said, "although - Sophy, why didn’t she just have the curate deal with it?"

 

"Sancia is a Catholic. She considers the Church of England anaemic and untrustworthy. And besides, the curate stammers."

 

"Didn't she convert?"

 

"Yes," Sophy said, turning off towards Sancia Talgarth's house. "But that is another matter entirely."

 

Drusilla clasped her hands together. "What are we supposed to do about it?"

 

"The Church of England?"

 

"No," Drusilla said, with a dryness usually reserved for Gervase at his most whimsical. "The poltergeist."

 

"Exorcise it, of course," Sophy said, drawing up at the gates of Sancia's commodious home with a flourish. "You'll find the requisite bell and book in my reticule. But I assume we can borrow candles."

 

**2**

 

"I really don't see why we have to do this," Drusilla said, kneeling down on the floor of the Rivenhall children's schoolroom and scattering a neat circle of salt. "I know you don't know London very well yet, but I would be delighted to introduce you to several clergymen who would be more than happy to help."

 

Sophy collected five candles and a lit taper from the housekeeper. "Nonsense. There's absolutely no need to call in a strange cleric when we're right here."

 

Drusilla coughed slightly.

 

"You live two streets away, Drusilla, it's hardly a great deal to ask."

 

"I was intending to make a perfectly normal morning call," Drusilla said, cleaning out the bell with a soft cloth, "when you seized me by the hand and demanded that I help exorcise your sister-in-law's pet cat. I had other things in mind for my day."

 

"Dead cat," Sophy corrected, flicking through the Bible Charles had supplied her with before retreating downstairs to his book-room, Gervase, and an improperly early sustaining snifter. "I can't imagine what a cat can have left undone in this life, but Amabel's very upset by its ghost. Understandably."

 

Drusilla stared mordantly at the aforementioned shade, which trotted through a cabinet of books and curled up in a patch of sunlight without disturbing the line of salt, for all the world as if it were alive.

 

"Understandably," Drusilla echoed. "Sophy, are you sure holy writ works on cats?"

 

"No," Sophy said, and handed over the Bible. "You start. You read so much more eloquently than I do."

 

**3**

 

Drusilla had heard Lady Cecilia Charlbury described as many things - elegant, divine, enchanting, fairylike, and other superlatives. Words like petrified and hagridden did not, as a rule, appear in these enconiums. Drusilla didn't know her, since Lady Cecilia had been in the country experiencing her first confinement when Drusilla had come to London and married Gervase, but she knew of her, and recognised her by sight.

 

She also knew Sophy was at Ashtead with Charles and not expected back until the evening, so when she saw Lady Cecilia burst into tears on the doorstep of Sophy's home she told Gervase to pull up the horses and went over to see if she could help.

 

"Lady Cecilia," she began uncertainly, "I know we are not acquainted, but your sister-in-law Sophy is a dear friend of mine, and -"

 

"Lady St Erth! Oh, heavens! You can deliver me!" Lady Cecilia flung her arms around Drusilla's neck.

 

In the phaeton, Gervase's fair eyebrows climbed up his forehead. Drusilla waved at him to drive on and prevailed upon Dassett the butler to let them take a moment in the drawing-room. The house was quite quiet; presumably Sophy and Charles had taken the whole family with them for a day-trip.

 

"It's Charlbury's little brother," Cecilia explained, her bluebell eyes brimming over with tears as she clasped Drusilla's hand, and added, in a hoarse, terrified whisper: "the one who drowned when he was a child - he _walks_."

 

"Does he say anything?" Drusilla asked, quite out of her depth. "Do anything?"

 

Cecilia shook her beautiful head. "He - he simply rises from the floor, and walks up the stairs to the nursery, just after Edward - my son - has gone to sleep for the night, and he stands over the cradle and watches. I can't bear it, Lady St Erth!"

 

"Do call me Drusilla," Drusilla said. "I can see how that would be very unnerving."

 

Cecilia let out a hysterical hiccup, and then calmed herself. "I hoped Sophy would be here and could help me. We have only just come to London. I hoped it would stop. But he is here too..."

 

"Well," Drusilla said, pouring Cecilia a restorative cup of tea. "Sophy will be back tonight and I am sure we will be able to deal with it. Why didn't you ask the rector to help?"

 

"Ask a stranger to exorcise the ghost of a little boy?" Cecilia blinked at her, and then took a bowl of cool water from the hovering housekeeper with thanks and bathed her eyes. Obviously working for Lady Ombersley created a keen understanding of panic. "I... I felt I could not. And I hoped he would just go away."

 

"Stay here tonight, with your son," Drusilla advised. "I can't imagine Lord Charlbury's brother ever visited this house in life, so he won't be able to come here. Sophy and I will speak to the boy tomorrow."

 

 

"I can't believe this was your idea," Sophy said the next night, as they sat waiting in the corridor by the Charlbury nursery, candles in hand.

 

"Lady Cecilia was on the verge of hysterics," Drusilla said, peering through the banisters. "What would you have done?"

 

"Exactly the same thing, which is why I am surprised you did it. Oh, here he comes."

 

The shade of a boy of about ten years old, dressed in the fashions of twenty-five years ago, made his sprightly way up the stairs towards the nursery. He had a sweet face, with a wide jaw and a mouth made for smiling; Drusilla recognised it from the portrait downstairs, and from a more than fleeting resemblance to Lord Charlbury himself.

 

The boy passed them as if he didn't notice them - he actually walked through Drusilla's foot, which felt like she'd dipped it in cold water - and went straight through the door to stand over baby Edward, who did not wake. The nurse pressed herself into a corner, telling a rosary frantically, and Drusilla and Sophy followed the shade.

 

He didn't do or say anything. He just watched over the baby.

 

"Thomas," Drusilla said gently. "Thomas Charlbury. May we talk to you?"

 

For a moment she thought he wouldn't answer, and then he turned to her and spoke.

 

"Of course, ma'am," he said, and bowed with a child's punctiliousness, punctured by a smile. He sounded as if he were talking underwater, or from very far away.

 

"Why have you risen to watch over your nephew?" Sophy said, equally gently. "You're frightening his mother."

 

"I want to keep him safe," Thomas said. "So that Everard won't cry, and his wife won't cry."

 

"Everard?" Sophy said. "Lord Charlbury?"

 

Thomas nodded. "He cried a great deal when I died. It was sad."

 

Drusilla swallowed hard. "Of course, Thomas, but Edward has a mother and a father to protect him, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins. Wouldn't you like to rest?"

 

Thomas looked up at them both. "I am very tired. But I want to help."

 

"And that is very good of you," Sophy said, with a sweet persistence that was beyond Drusilla (who was already beginning to wonder if she could reconcile Cecilia Charlbury to a nursery ghost). "But you have done your duty. No-one could ask any more of you."

 

Thomas hesitated. His small bluish fingers rested lightly over baby Edward's head.

 

"Everard will be proud of you, and grateful that protecting his son was your first thought," Sophy told him.

 

Thomas straightened his spine a little. "What must I do?"

 

 

Afterwards, Sophy and Drusilla rode home in silence.

 

"I had a nun for a governess, for a month," Sophy said. "Her name was Sister María. Tilly must have been ill, or something of that nature."

 

Drusilla made a vague noise.

 

"Sister María taught me that ghosts are denied their hope of salvation while they still walk this earth," Sophy said.

 

She put her arm around Drusilla. Drusilla leaned her head against Sophy's shoulder.

 

"At least he is at peace," Sophy said.

 

**4**

 

It was Lucius Ulverston, nigh-on collapsing in the hall of Gervase and Sophy's London house, who alerted Drusilla and Sophy to the ghost at the Horse Guards. An old sergeant, according to what an ashen-faced Lucius said to Gervase. An old sergeant on parade, still bearing the wounds that had killed him at Waterloo, and anyone who came close to him heard the sounds (and more damningly, smelled the smells) of battle. Several regimental chaplains had apparently already lost their nerve and fled.

 

Gervase himself looked white and pinched about the nostrils. He called for brandy with an unaccustomed harsh note to his voice, supporting Lucius as if he thought the other man would fall over if he let go.

 

Sophy and Drusilla, card game abandoned - Sophy was trying to teach Drusilla to count cards, a usefully disreputable but technically not dishonourable skill Sir Horace had passed on - looked at each other.

 

"Can you get us in?" Drusilla said to Sophy.

 

Sophy nodded. "I'll fetch the Bible, you call for the carriage."

 

"Drusilla," Gervase said. His eyes were seeing something else as well as her, and focussed on her only with difficulty: a battlefield, Drusilla thought. "You don't have to do this. There are chaplains galore - the canon at Westminster, if necessary - the vicar of St Martin's -"

 

"Neither Sophy nor I ever saw the battle," Drusilla said, laying a soft hand on his shoulder. "It will not affect us the same way. Let us take care of this. You reinforce Lucius, or Marianne will be driven to hysterics at the state of him."

 

Gervase managed a pale smile. She kissed him lightly, picked up a bell and a small selection of candles, and left with Sophy.

 

 

Horse Guards was all but deserted. Someone had dropped their Bible on the way out - presumably one of the chaplains. Sophy looked unusually solemn and serious as she picked it up and refolded several of the leaves into their proper positions.

 

"Let's finish this as quickly as we can," Drusilla said. "And then we can all pretend it never happened. If we tip the soldiers well enough, nobody even has to know we were here."

 

**5**

 

The ghost highwayman lunged up out of the road and drove through Charles Rivenhall's equipage, causing the horses to scream and kick over their traces, the coachmen and postilions to howl with panic, the coach to lurch into a ditch, and the irredeemable ruination of a four-hand game of piquet played by Drusilla, Charles, Sophy and Gervase.

 

"Damn," Charles said succinctly, disentangling himself from his wife. Gervase replied with a good deal more military language. "Sophy, are you-"

 

"Fine."

 

Gervase, who had been sitting on Drusilla's other side and had therefore not landed on her when the carriage went into the ditch, sprawled so that she could sit on his stomach slightly more comfortably.

 

"Another ghost for you and Sophy to lay," he said cheerfully. "But perhaps after we get the carriage back on the road."

 

**+1**

 

Sophy and Drusilla were not expecting to encounter a ghost at Alver Park; the new Marchioness of Alverstoke seemed far too efficient, and her household far too well-ordered. They followed the ghost - a tall, beautiful woman wearing a homely round gown fifteen years old in style, with her hair simply dressed - down the corridors with apprehension, wondering where she would stop.

 

The ghost stopped near the family's rooms, after pausing affectionately at two doors near the schoolroom. Near the Marquis and Marchioness' rooms she met their hostess, still dressed in her evening gown, though her brown hair was loosened and her eyes were soft with tiredness.

 

Frederica Dauntry held out a hand to the ghost, and the ghost extended one in return. Frederica almost spoke a word, but no sound came out; their fingers almost touched.

 

The ghost disappeared, and Frederica smiled softly at Sophy and Drusilla. Drusilla, suddenly conscious of their intrusion, blushed.

 

"I hope my mother didn't startle you," Frederica said. "She visits us, sometimes. Principally to keep an eye on Jessamy and Felix, I think. Heaven knows they need it."

 

"I do beg your pardon - I didn't know," Drusilla said, and then wondered what it was she didn't know. Several things, evidently.

 

Frederica merely said: "How should you?"

 

Sophy and Drusilla said nothing.

 

"We are fortunate," Frederica said. "Whatever should come to pass - we know we are never completely alone." She smiled again, the same smile as the ghost. "I find that very reassuring."

 


End file.
